The recent appointment of a staunch abstinence-only proponent to head the federal family planning program is just the latest sign that the Bush administration is hazardous to our health, Jessica Stark says

JESSICA STARK
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006
Opinions

JUST WHEN WE all thought President Bush couldn't possibly get more conservative, he spectacularly proves us wrong. But this time, it's not just politics — Bush's conservative ideals are beginning to permeate public health care.

On Nov. 16, our president appointed Dr. Eric Keroack as head of the family planning program at the Department of Health and Human Services — the only federally funded program solely concerned with reproductive health and family planning services. More precisely, he appointed Keroack to head HHS's Office of Population Affairs. His official title is deputy assistant secretary for population affairs.

In his new job, which he began last week (confirmation hearings weren't required), Keroack oversees OPA's Title X family planning program, which had a $288 million budget in 2005. According to The Washington Post, the program supports a network of 4,600 clinics that provide information and counseling to 5 million people each year. He also oversees a $30 million program that encourages abstinence among teens.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, is not only staunchly anti-abortion but also unwaveringly against the use of contraceptives. He is known nationwide for his crazy and unsupported medical theories concerning reproductive health.

Keroack's disturbingly abysmal credentials include being the medical director of A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit organization in Massachusetts that runs six pregnancy health service centers. The organization perpetuates the falsehood that having an abortion increases a woman's risk for breast cancer. The group also steadfastly opposes distributing contraceptives, even to married couples, claiming that the distribution and use of contraceptives is demeaning to women and human sexuality and can negatively affect a person's physical and mental health.

Keroack now conveniently declares that he disagrees with these claims; indeed, an HHS spokesperson says Keroack prescribed birth control to patients while in private practice. But it is clear his obvious pro-life stance and opposition to the use of contraceptives made him especially appealing to the conservative Bush administration.

Keroack's conservative, if unsupported, medical theories probably also won him support from our president. At abstinence conferences throughout the country, Keroack has presented his novel theory concerning brain chemistry.

This theory specifically concerns the chemical oxytocin, which is found in the human brain and is released during activities that result in positive social interaction, such as sexual intercourse, and is thought to promote bonding in social settings, such as sexual relationships.

Keroack claims that by having too many sexual partners, a person can exhaust his or her supply of oxytocin and will thus lose the capacity for having healthy, fulfilling relationships.

Interestingly, Dr. Rebecca Turner, one of the scientists upon whose research Keroack's theory is based, has publicly announced that this claim is completely unsupported by her studies. Apparently, our government likes to reward those who fudge the scientific aspect of their medical theories by putting them in charge of health care services for the entire country.

If truth be told, this all sounds like a bad joke. Since when are contraceptives demoralizing to women? Granted, using contraceptives in order to have promiscuous sex with multiple partners can have adverse effects on one's mental health and increase one's risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), but using contraceptives in general can elicit very positive results.

In fact, it could even be argued that, rather than being demoralizing to women, they are empowering by providing women with the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies and protect themselves against STDs.

Furthermore, how can one use up a chemical in one's body? Most chemicals found in the human body are produced by the body itself and thus can continue to be produced as they are consumed. I'm no doctor, but almost anyone who has had any kind of sex ed course would agree that Keroack's oxytocin theory sounds completely ludicrous.

While it is definitely worrisome that the person in charge of federal funding for public reproductive health care is so ideologically extreme, Keroack's appointment will not drastically alter the country's family planning and reproductive health services. After all, there is only one federal program concerned with these issues, and the funding it provides cannot possibly be enough to control all of the abortion clinics, contraceptive manufacturing centers, or pharmacies that sell birth control pills across the country.

There are still organizations out there, such as Planned Parenthood, that will continue to provide couples with adequate and accurate reproductive health care and information even without government funding.

More important than Keroack, however, is the coming 2008 election. Hopefully the voters in this country will take Bush's performance into account and vote in such a way that will get this country out of the mess it's in. Once Bush is out of office, it's only a matter of time until Keroack and the many other incompetent conservative ideologues Bush has put into power are replaced with people much more competent and knowledgeable about their positions.